Ruth Handler
Ruth Handler & Barbie Mattel started out before WW2 as a manufacture of Plexiglas furniture. Expanding into jewelry & home furnishings. The name MATTEL can from the combination of Harold Matson & Elliot Handler’s names. Matson left the company in 1946. Due to wartime rationing of plastics, Elliot switched to wood picture frames.He believed in the future was plastics. The first success as a toy company was the Uke A Doodle, a toy ukulele. It brought the company its first fortune. 1955 was a big year, four years before Barbie’s introduction. Disney opened Disneyland & ABC started airing the Mickey Mouse Club. Disney asked Mattel to sponsor the TV show, for $500,000- the worth of company. No toy company was ever sponsored a series before and Mattel took a chance by doing this. They introduced The Burp Gun & by Christmas, the company sold out of the toy. Also, that year they hire an electrical engineer, Jack Ryan, who made equipment for the Pentagon. He space-age savvy impressed Elliot & signed his to a remarkable contract that would pay him a royalty of his team’s designs In August 12, 1955, Bild Lilli was produced as a doll, a lascivious (sophisticated) gag gift for men. She was based on a cartoon character from Bild Zeuitung, a post war German National Enquirer, was a 3d pin-up. She was a gold digger- always after a man’s wallet which was much more important than his looks. Her cartoon debut was on July 24 1952. It showed a her speaking to a gypsy asking “Can’t you give a name & address of this tall, handsome, rich man?” Lilli was never meant for child; she was displayed on dashboards of car & given as gifts to women but children also became interested in the doll. Lilli’s feet were not feet but molded into a black, high heel pumps. Lilli had an outfit for every occasion. Ruth Handler encountered Lilli by seeing her in on a rope swing in the window of a shop in Switzerland. She bought 3 dolls: 2 for her daughter Barbara as displays since she was too old for dolls & one for her self. She saw the adult shaped doll, which was something she was trying to get her designers to make for yrs, but they said it couldn’t be done. The main idea for the doll was from watching in the early 50’s her daughter & her friends play make-believe with adult paper dolls- forsaking the baby dolls of the time that most children played with at the time. Barbara’s paper dolls were teenage, high school, college, and career type dolls. Through imagination their lived their lives as adults & reflected the world around themselves. Child’s personal inner life can be as individual as a finger print- at worst, anomalous (unusual) message, At best a feminist pioneer. She could invent herself with a costume change. Handler gave her air of respectability. Barbie is us. Ruth has spent years to convince people at Mattel, including her husband, there was a market for an adult doll. She taught independence, unlike like baby doll would teach nurturing. The designers saw it as costly- to make a real woman doll with real nice clothing with zippers & darts & hemlines. Ruth felt they were horrified by making a doll with breasts. Just because the doll couldn’t be made in the US, it could be made elsewhere & they turned to Japan. Jack was making a trip to Japan to find a manufacture of some electric gadgets he designed & Ruth slipped lilli into his case asking, “see if you can get this copied”. Jack went with Frank Nakamura, a former military Japanese language teacher & a recent grad from LA Art Center, hired a production designer. After the war he was sent to debrief Japanese soldiers & report the finding back to Gen. Macarthur so he was familiar with the country. They had problem trying to get someone there to produce Lilli since the Japanese didn’t like the severe, mean look of her but they did find one company, Kokusai Boeki Kaisha (KBK) a Tokyo based novelty maker. The company was a network of small manufactures across Japan & found a doll maker Yamasaki to make Barbie. The difference between Lilli body & Barbie was she was made by “injection-molded” from a rigid plastic while they want to make Barbie from a soft vinyl but the process would have to be different that Lilli. They would have to use a “rotation –molded” to ensure the detail of the doll. The main issue was the doll manufacturer. Mattel bought in Brooklyn engineer, Seymour Adler, have never made or used a rotation molding before. Seymour was familiar with the last process of plastics but never had deal with this issue first hand. While this was going on, Jack Ryan & his team were busy transforming Barbie look from a German tart. They brought a sculptor in but no one at Mattel was happy with the results. So with the some modification to Lilli, a head was cast. Modifications were made to her joints. The molds were sent to Japan where they were electroplated so they could be used. Before Barbie could be produced, Ryan had to approve six casting from it but some embellishments were being made the torso was coming back with nipples on them & he would have to modify them by filing them off & returning the samples back the manufactures. This happened a number of time but they finally got the message. Barbie proportions are not a misogynistic plot more of a fact of engineering: to drape a 6th scale figure in human scale fabrics- adding 4 layers of clothing to her waist would make it bigger than her hips. KBK also manufactures the clothing for Barbie but didn’t do the actual designing. That would be handled Charlotte Johnson, a 40-ish veteran designer who have been working in the garment industry since she was 17. They found her teaching fashion design at Los Angeles’ Chouinard Institute. Many say she created Barbie in her own image. Her had the same head shape & hairstyle. Her stubborn reputation came during her yr in Japan while working with a Japanese designer & two seamstresses to developing the designs to its simplest forms. She was very fussy about the fit of the costume. She was fussy about the fabrics, which made problems for Nakamura. He needed small batches of fabric, which many textile companies were reluctant to do. With much hassling he was able to get the iconic black & white striped fabric for her Barbie’s first swimsuit. He did more haggling to get miniature snaps, buttons less than 1/8”, yard of mini zippers from Yoshida Kojko (YKK zipper manufacturer). Charlotte sent him scrambling pastel tricot for Barbie’s undergarments. Barbie couldn’t wear couture clothes over bare plastics: 2 strapless bras, a half-slip & a petticoat along with a girdle. Many of the outfit wear created by hand by Japanese housewives. these workers were called “homework people” because they did they’re work from their immaculate homes. These people had a great desire to get it right and to keep the outfits soil-free. Once the garments were checked for flaws another group would sew them into their cardboard package. Men worked in the factories. They were paid affixed wage while the home worker were paid by piecework. During August, the workers all quit to tend to the fields at rice harvesting time. In 1958, Barbie started to emerge from her doll models in Tokyo. Saran hair was stitched on & styled into her ponytails. She had side-glance white irises eyes. The mask-like face temples would clog after 20 faces. Childhood was an invention in the Eighteen-century. By the Nineteenth-century, in response to trends in the industrial revolution, children were looked upon as symbols of free imagination and natural goodness also as a consumer of toys. By the late 19th c., it has become an industry with German dominating the market place. The fuss of an “adult” doll in 1959, considering all doll before 1820 were adult. Baby dolls came into existence the early 1800’s along with clothes specifically designed for children. The dolls didn’t look innocent or American but Mattel marketing group took care of that. The marketing group The Institute of Motivational Research headed by the director Ernest Dichter personal oversaw the 6 months survey. Mattel pioneered TV advertising & through it sold Barbie directly to kids. He asked the questions: “is Barbie a nice kid friendly loved by everyone or is she vain & selfish, maybe even cheap? Does she have good taste or is she a little too flashy?” Eight to 13 year old girls loved her but parents were disliked her. One even commenting that the “daddy doll” was perfect for decorating a bar that leads back to Lilli’s roots. Deichter made a suggestion to place catalog with coupon for purchase of other outfit in her line but he found area in which Barbie could be useful. One mother was skeptical but her daughter mention “she’s so well groomed”. Barbie could make a tomboy into a little lady by teaching proper appearance. At the time, she didn’t have any parents and no man to define her relationships of responsibility. In March of 1959, Mattel’s first promotional effort was made at Toy Fair to the toy retailer but when buyers saw her, it was not love at first sight. Sear’s buyer Lowthar Kiesowas, one of Mattel biggest customers, was turned off by the doll’s sexiness and did not place an order for her. But other retailers were willing to take a chance on stocking her. Mattel started a commercial blitz in March. Spring came and went but they wonder if they spawned a turkey. With summer’s arrival, the doll took off. Kids had to have a Barbie doll. She was sunshine, the future made of plastic. Her first career was a teen model. Consumers pushed for a boyfriend. Ken Carson debuted in 1961. Her first face & body change was in 1967 to acquiring real eyelashes & rotating waist. Her big design change came in 1971 with her eyes not glancing demurely downward but straight ahead in the Malibu ones. In 1965, Mattel subsidized Shindana toys an AA-run South Central LA Toys Company who produced ethnically correct playthings before they were fashionable. In 2000, Mattel brought out the resin “Silkstone line”, an 11 ½” Barbie doll with the vintage face who wore classically elegant fashions. This line was & still is designed by Barbie’s top designer, Robert Best. Category:Fashion Doll Designers